Stepanovna lowered her voice.
“So we have sold a sideboard.... Yes,” she chuckled, “we sold it to some people downstairs. ‘Speculators,’ too, I expect. They came up early in the morning and took it away quietly, and our house committee never heard anything about it!”
Stepanovna laughed outright. She thought it a huge joke.
For all your furniture, you see, was supposed to be registered and belonged not to yourself but to the community. Superfluous furniture was to be confiscated in favour of the working-man, but generally went to decorate the rooms of members of the committee or groups of Communists in whose charge the houses were placed. Sailor Communists seemed to make the largest demands. “Good-morning,” they would say on entering your home. “Allow us, please, to look around and see how much furniture you have.” Some things, they would tell you, were required by the house committee. Or a new “worker” had taken rooms downstairs. He was a “party man,” that is, he belonged to the Communist Party and was therefore entitled to preference, and he required a bed, a couch, and some easy-chairs.
It was useless to argue, as some people did and got themselves into trouble by telling the “comrades” what they thought of them. The wise and thoughtful submitted, remembering that while many of these men were out just to pocket as much as they could, there were others who really believed they were thus distributing property in the interests of equality and fraternity.
But the wily and clever would exclaim: “My dear comrades, I am delighted! Your comrade is a ‘party man’? That is most interesting, for I am intending to sign on myself. Only yesterday I put some furniture by for you. As for this couch you ask for, it is really indispensable, but in another room there is a settee you can have. And that picture, of course, I would willingly give you, only I assure you it is an heirloom. Besides, it is a very bad painting, an artist told me so last week. Would you not rather have this one, which he said was really good?”
And you showed them any rotten old thing, preferably something big. Then you would offer them tea and apologize for giving them nothing but crusts with it. You explained you wished to be an “idealist” Communist, and your scruples would not permit you to purchase delicacies from “speculators.”
Your visitors were not likely to linger long over your crusts, but if you succeeded in impressing them with your devotion to the Soviet régime they would be less inclined to molest a promising candidate for comradeship.
But Stepanovna possessed no such subtlety. She was, on the contrary, unreasonably outspoken and I wondered that she did not get into difficulties.
Stepanovna and Varia often used to go to the opera, and when they came home they would discuss intelligently and with enthusiasm the merits and demerits of respective singers.